Adjunct Assistant Professor Debra Mitts-Smith (MS '98, PhD '07), author and expert on children's and young adult literature, will serve as the distinguished speaker for the 2018 Charles W. Mann Jr. Lecture in the Book Arts on March 22 at Pennsylvania State University.
Her talk will focus on images of the wolf in children's books published in Western Europe and North America from the sixteenth century to the present. She will address the values and attitudes that inform our depictions of the wolf, and how illustrations of wolves in children's books impart social, cultural and scientific information not only about wolves, but also about humans and human behavior. The event is available for livestream viewing on Mediasite Live.
Mitts-Smith's research focuses on visual culture, children's literature, and the history of the book. She is a regular contributor to International Wolf, the magazine for the International Wolf Center. Her book, Picturing the Wolf in Children's Literature, was published by Routledge in 2010.